


when you're searching for salvation (but it feels so far away)

by thatiranianphantom



Category: Riverdale (TV 2017)
Genre: 506 doesn't look too bright either, Angst, Betty and Jughead deal with 505, Brief Barchie, But it's pretty clear Betty is not into it, F/M, Season 5 spec, With angst and actual communication and catharsis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-21
Updated: 2021-02-28
Packaged: 2021-03-18 10:54:32
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 7,773
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29608350
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thatiranianphantom/pseuds/thatiranianphantom
Summary: She exists in light and dark, she thinks, but to him, she’d always been blinding brightness. He sees her again, seven years later, and he can see how the light inside her has dimmed.//A 505-506 coda. Betty and Jughead try to navigate what they've done, and what they've become.//
Relationships: Betty Cooper/Jughead Jones
Comments: 50
Kudos: 99





	1. when you've lost the fight inside of you

**Author's Note:**

> Well how do, good people. 
> 
> So....I think I've mostly moved past the anger stage, but DAMN. That episode turned every character into the worst possible versions of themselves. I have a huge amount of trouble reconciling it, but this helped. This is 3000 words of angst and fallout, and I will pay it off in the second chapter!
> 
> I hope you find it at least mildly cathartic. While I don't necessarily WANT this to happen in the show, at least we'd get some emotional fallout?

_ Lately it seems, I've lost inspiration  
It feels like it's miles away  
I sleep through the day  
And cry through the night time  
I'm caught in an empty space _

* * *

She’s thinking as Archie undoes her buttons, and that is precisely what she is  _ not _ supposed to be doing. 

That’s what this whole thing is  _ for _ , so she didn’t have to think. So that she could just feel. So that for one moment, she was not dirty, starving, with a broken arm, at the bottom of a pit. That’s also why there are no sleepovers in their arrangement. If he saw the nightmares, he may ask questions, which is antithetical to their whole arrangement. No questions, no thinking, just skin on skin. 

It’s one of the only things she’s grateful that she’s not seeing Jughead for. Actually, she’s grateful in several ways that he hates her. If he were to look at her once, if at any point she felt his blue eyes sweep up and down her body, she’s sure he’d know. He’d know everything. Archie has no such intensity in his eyes, and that’s why she’s pinned underneath him, in her mom’s station wagon. 

* * *

People would shake their heads if they were to see. Small town people, everyone knows everyone. They’d talk, for sure. 

_ Betty Cooper,  _ they’d say.  _ She used to be such a good girl. _

Joke’s on them, she supposes. She wouldn’t know Betty Cooper anywhere. She’s not sure where she left Betty Cooper, but she’s gone. 

Betty Cooper cried when she told her boyfriend that she kissed Archie. This Betty hears that “oh, no” in her dreams. That Betty Cooper pinned her boyfriend down on the bed, whispered  _ I love you _ s into every single part of him she could kiss. This Betty has long stopped moaning out  _ Jug _ whenever Glenn, or Archie, or Mark or Paul fail to make her see stars. 

That Betty Cooper smiled up at the blue eyes she was sure she’d look at forever. This Betty exists.

This Betty sees Jughead smiling at the pretty new owner of Pops, and it’s the first time in months that she feels something coiling like a snake in her belly. She sees this, and she hears his voice snarling in her ear. 

_ I’ve become something good, despite you. You’re not here, and I’m  _ glad _.  _

She keeps the voicemail, listens to it often. It’s the new equivalent of digging her fingernails into her palms; the words have a similar sharp effect. 

Today, she sees Jughead and Tabitha, and she has her clothes off as soon as she hears Archie open the door. 

Today, she needs to forget. 

_ You wouldn’t care anyway. Not if Archie was there,  _ the voicemail sneers. 

* * *

  
  


It works because it always does. This Betty disappears so easily. 

Archie thrusts into her, and Betty hears the same thing with each thrust. 

_ He hates you. He hates you. He hates you _ . 

She repeats it so often that it almost soothes her. She mixes it with TBK’s taunts, and paradoxically, she feels blissfully unaware. Zoned out, awash in nothing. 

But reality is harsh and violent, and it slams her back with something so simple as a bag dropping to the floor. She knows Archie hears it too, because he stills above her, pulls out, and frantically wipes at nothing between them. 

And then he says it. “Jug.” 

* * *

  
  


The nothingness Betty felt a moment ago is something she would give up so much to return to. Reality is a horror she would gladly check out of right now, because then she wouldn’t be lying below Archie, and Jughead Jones wouldn’t be standing in the bedroom’s doorway, staring at them.

But even Archie can’t save her from this, so she makes the mistake of looking at him.

It’s not a look she’s seen before. She expects it might be and expects the look to mirror when she told him about the kiss, but it isn’t.

No, this look is worse. This look is shattered, pulverized, absolutely broken. And he’s not looking at Archie; he’s looking at her. 

_ He hates you _ . Maybe he didn’t. Maybe he does now. 

She pushes herself to a sit, ears ringing, slowly covers herself with her clothes. It’s routine, mechanical. His eyes never leave her. They burn that look into her like a brand she’ll carry for the rest of her life. And all the while, her stomach churns violently. She feels his eyes bore into her as her stomach roils and her brain cries out, “no, no, no no!”

She pulls on her shirt and underwear in absolute silence, in steady eye contact. Nobody breaks. 

But then Archie sits up. He calls it out again, calls out “Jug.”

* * *

  
  


Betty remembers the night Penelope Blossom had sent them through the woods. She remembers the way she had clung onto Jughead, nearly tearing holes in his suit jacket, as if he was all she had, because he was. 

She remembers the way he’d whispered to her, told her not to be afraid, that he’d take care of her. She remembers them lying on her bed; his forehead pressed to hers as she sobbed. 

_ You’re never alone, Betty. I’m here; I’m here forever. I love you so much.  _

That was Past Jughead. This one has more tattoos and glasses and a new haunted look in his eyes to add to the wreckage she created. 

This Jughead gives one single sob and tears out the door. 

* * *

  
  


She doesn’t even think she made a conscious decision to follow him. Her brain lacked involvement in the decision-making process, so one moment she was lying in bed, the next she was running down the Andrews’ front path after him, yelling his name. 

He doesn’t turn. His footsteps are heavy, and he’s not wearing shoes. 

She keeps calling because she needs him to turn. She doesn’t want to look at him, but she needs to look at him. 

The exhalations of his name become pleas, then sobs, then her fingers curl around his arm, and he nearly spins off his feet, but he’s facing her. 

“Please,” she gasps. “Please, Jug…”

“How long?” His voice is tight, like the string of a bow. Like with one more stretch, it’d snap. 

This Betty considers lying to him, but some part of her mind conjures up that 18-year-old boy in the bed and that “oh, no.”

“A few weeks,” she mumbles. 

He nods, more of a jerk of the head than anything else. Not an acknowledgment, barely a reaction. 

“It’s just...it’s not what….it’s just  _ sex _ , Jughead, just physical.”

He looks at her then, finally looks at her. His gaze is fire, and she feels like she’s burning under it. “I don’t care.” 

It’s confusing. He’s on the driveway, in socked feet, and she catches him swiping under his eyes a few times. 

“Jug, I promise you -”

He shakes his head, and she feels moisture on her face. The tears he’d brushed off. 

“ _ No _ , Betty. Save it. I don’t care.” 

“But…”

He steps forward, until he’s close. Too close, and then she’s looking into those eyes again. 

_ I did all of this without you, because you weren’t there. You don’t have to lower yourself to me anymore.  _

“I don’t  _ care _ , Betty. I don’t care about you, or what you do, or who you’re with. I don’t care anymore. Fuck Archie, or Reggie, or Chad. I don’t care, because I don’t give a shit about you anymore.” 

She wishes for the voicemail. The words are predictable. They’re memorizable. She knows because she has memorized them. They’re almost a lullaby at this point.

These words are new. These words prick into her, cut her open, draw blood. 

“I don’t give a fuck about you, Betty.”

He rips his arm from her grasp. She starts forward, and he doesn’t catch her. 

“Leave me the fuck alone, Betty. Never talk to me again. Don’t look at me, don’t call me. Go fuck Archie. Go back to your perfect life, the picket fence, the perfect children. It shouldn’t be that hard for you to forget me, after all.” 

And then he’s gone, but at least her legs waited until he leaves to fold under her. 

* * *

  
  
  


She doesn’t chase him. 

She doesn’t, but Veronica does. She swallows her pride to call her former best friend, and it goes down rough and spiked. 

Veronica goes and looks for him, because Betty can’t. Betty, both this Betty and the Other One, sit in her room and let the breath consume her body in huge, gasping sobs. She lets herself lie on the bed in her old room, and hear the cacophony of sounds. 

She lets herself hear her own gasps of  _ yes _ , and  _ please, Jug, more _ and so many  _ I love you _ ’s. 

And she lets herself hear  _ you never have to worry about the weirdo loner too in love with you to say a single word to your face following you around anymore _ . 

And when the sobs get too much, when she struggles to draw breath in, she hears,  _ I don’t fucking care about you, Betty _ , and that is worst of all. 

* * *

  
  
  


He wakes up on the forest floor, and cold is the first thing he feels. 

His feet are cold. His body shivers. His heart is frozen. 

And for the first time, it didn’t work. The alcohol didn’t do the job he needed it to do because he still saw her. He saw her in extremis, hard and soft.

Eyes closed with ecstasy, and Archie on top of her. Then smiling ever so softly, after “also” and a fifteen-year-old boy who was sure she could hear his heart pounding. 

She exists in light and dark, she thinks, but to him, she’d always been blinding brightness. He sees her again, seven years later, and he can see how the light inside her has dimmed. He doesn’t meet her eyes because if he did, he’s sure she’d see seven years of a loop that screams  _ I kissed Archie _ . Jughead doesn’t know how to reconcile that with  _ I’ll never stop loving you,  _ and he certainly doesn’t know how to stop doing exactly that. 

And then he sees her underneath Archie, and it slaughters something inside of him, something he’s not sure how to define. 

A few weeks, she’d said. A few weeks and Jughead feels what’s inside of him crumple to ash. 

He’s cold, and now Veronica Lodge (Gekko)’s face is above him. He refuses to let her usher him home. Where is home now? He doubts it was ever Archie’s house, and he can’t go back there. 

He asks to go to Pops, and she sighs and agrees. 

* * *

  
  
  


Tabitha comments that he shouldn’t be there right away. 

_ No shit _ , he wants to say. Everything about being here was wrong. This whole place seemed to throb around him, spin in a dizzying meld of colors and sounds and laughing. He heard the laughing most clearly. Sometimes (often), it was jeering. It mocked him; it followed him and giggled at him, that he could ever think that he could  _ be _ anything more than what he was. 

And that’s bad, but sometimes it’s worse. Sometimes he hears her giggle, and that is so, so much worse.

But it isn’t, it appears, what Tabitha meant. She clarifies that he shouldn’t be  _ here _ , at Pops right now, not when she can smell the alcohol wafting off of him. Bad for the customers, she says, and there is a tiny note of sympathy in her eyes. 

He doesn’t feel human, doesn’t even feel like he can function, but his brain moves without him and is looking at bus schedules. 

He needs to leave. He needs not to see her; he needs to begin the process of forgetting about her. How, he doesn’t know, but he suspects it involves large quantities of alcohol, and he can practically hear its siren song now. 

He tells Tabitha it’s his last shift, that he’ll figure out what to do about the debt collectors. There’s still a note of sympathy in her eyes as she informs him that it’s for the best, that he was her worst waiter ever, better at eating than he ever was at serving. There’s no need to work, she says. He looks like crap, and he should go home. 

But when he turns to do just that, he comes face to face with one Archie Andrews. He has never wished to be anywhere but Pops before this moment, as he stands in front of Archie, who is twisting his fingers together. His back is straighter than it was before, though. The army seems to run through him. Jughead doesn’t recognize him, and realizes with a start that Archie is not someone he has recognized even before the army. 

The boy who let Jughead, with holes in his shoes and thrift store clothes, up into his treehouse  _ instead _ of Reggie Mantle is not who he sees standing in front of him, and he wonders when that happened. 

This Archie coughs, but Jughead still doesn’t look at him. 

“Look, Jug…” 

“Don’t call me that.” It comes out on a snarl to one of the rare people that once called him Juggie. 

That person actually looks surprised. He has the gall to look shocked, and when he mumbles through a few apologies, Jughead barely hears them. 

Archie presses. He keeps pushing, keeps apologizing. And with every apology, the buzz in Jughead’s ears gets louder, until he finally swings around, nose to nose, with the man he once called his brother. 

“ _ Why? _ ” 

Archie looks a bit stymied. “Why?”

Jughead gives a furious nod, and there are different images in his head now. There are images of Betty under Archie. Of their wedding, stuffy and perfect. Of Betty lying in a hospital bed, a redheaded child in her arms, and he in the doorway, watching. Always watching. 

It fills him with something not unlike the alcohol, a singing through his veins. A blackout of everyone else around him. It curls his speech into something harsh, something ugly.

“Why are you sorry, Archie?”

The man stutters, mumbles about sleeping with someone important to Jughead, but if anything, it shows he doesn’t get it. It’s not just the sleeping with Betty. It’s the lying. It’s the way they were looking for ways to be together without him. It’s things falling into their natural order. 

It’s his fist in Archie’s face, for one glorious, shining moment, where he hears the satisfying crunch of bone. 

And then it’s both of them being dragged outside, so he runs.

  
  


* * *

  
  
  


She finds him in the bunker like she has so many times before. But before, he may have picked her up. Before, he may have kissed her, may have laid on the bed in this same bunker, her ear pressed to his heart and his fingers carding through her hair. 

Now, his fist flies to the wall at just the sight of her. Now, he nearly pushes her out of the way, frantically stuffing his belongings into his bag because he can’t look at her, can’t be near her. 

She says his name, a soft exhalation of  _ Jug, _ and he very nearly combusts. Something inside him, something he doesn’t recognize, tells her to get the hell away from him and tries so,  _ so _ hard not to care about the look on her face. 

But her face...it’s filled with tears. And he’s never been good at seeing Betty Cooper cry, no matter the circumstance. 

She tells him Polly is missing. That she’s been in with the Ghoulies, and then she says the worst thing she could possibly say, something that makes his fingers  _ itch  _ for a drink. Something that would shatter him, if there was anything left.

  
“I need you.” 

It’s a visceral reaction. It jets him off his seat, plunges him towards the ladder. He’s heard those words before. Many times, some gasped in pleasure, some murmured tenderly one sunny morning in a pink-flowered room. 

He shakes his head, and tears rush forth. He bites them back, but the bile rises in his throat, and he needs to get away, needs to leave.

And then she gives him a tear-stained “please, Juggie.”

It bursts out of him. “Don’t call me that!” 

She steps back, looking just the slightest bit afraid but not surprised. He slams his fist into the wall again, feels the vibration through the tiny bunker. 

“You have no damn right to ask me for anything.”

She nods. “I know. I know, Jughead.”

He swipes at his face, cards his fingers through his beanie-less hair. That very same beanie she made him, gave to him in this sacred space. 

“Why don’t you ask  _ Archie _ ?” It’s biting, but that’s good. The anger is good. He needs it, because without it, all he has is what wasn’t good enough for her. 

“I don’t need Archie on this. We both know that.” She reaches out, just a bit, as if trying to reach for his hand, but can’t complete the gesture. 

“You sure as fuck don’t need me,  _ Betty _ ,” he spits out her name, the name that never used to fail to make the old Jughead smile. 

She shakes her head, and her tears fly onto his face. Poetic, he thinks. 

“I  _ do _ need you, Jughead. Polly needs you. The twins need you. There’s nobody else but you.” 

Jughead wishes more than anything that he was dead inside. That whatever he felt for Betty Cooper would die and  _ leave _ , because this feeling was worse than any he thinks he’s ever felt. He can’t look at Betty and not think of Archie. But he can’t refuse Betty when she needs him.

He gives a wry chuckle, at what, he doesn’t know. His circumstances, his lack of direction, his fucked-up life.

“You broke my heart,” he snarls at her. “Worse than that. You took it. You took it from me, and now it’s gone.”

It’s not the most articulate thing he’s ever said, but the blow lands.

She nods, the tears still crystallizing her cheeks. “I know. I know I did, Jug. I’ll never be able to make up for that. I’ll never be able to take it back. I don’t ever expect you...I mean I’d….I know you’ll never forgive me. I don’t expect anything. I’m here for Polly.”

He gives a hard exhale. “I don’t owe you or your family anything.”

Another nod as her shoulders droop. “I know.” 

There’s silence for a long time. Jughead can hear in between it, though, can hear the things whispered to each other in the dark a long time ago, when they were people they’ll never be again. 

And then, finally, his head snaps up. “I’ll talk to a person or two. Now  _ leave _ .” 

Her face softens, and again, it looks like she might reach out, but he prays silently she won’t. He can’t do this now, can’t see anything but her under Archie, can physically feel the love he  _ knows _ a different version of them once shared fracturing, and he doesn’t understand  _ why _ . 

He doesn’t know why this had to happen, even to him. But he flips open his laptop, and he starts looking at Polly Cooper’s whereabouts, and when he pounds down the flask in his backpack, then another flask from his bag, he is trying very hard not to think at all.

* * *

_When the life you had planned_  
_Slowly slips through your hands_  
_When it feels like you just slept through all the best years of your life_  
_When you can't find your way_  
_When each day ends the same_  
_When you've lost the fight inside of you_  
_Is there anything worth holding on to?_


	2. maybe tomorrow my heart will reawaken

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> On the times Jughead does show up, her stomach gives an odd swoop that she refuses to dig into. He shows up on his terms, when he feels it necessary. 
> 
> One time, one stupid time, she sent him the follow-up to an email, and it reads Will you come with me?
> 
> In her defense, the stupid, useless words come after hours of stupid, useless crying after she finds a box of their old investigation materials, and she remembers how it was when it was so good. 
> 
> When monsters were lurking in the dark, but there were also his warm arms every night. When she felt like she was losing herself, but then there was his voice telling her, I know who you are. When there was them, and it was good.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You ever write something that you like PARTS of, but mostly you just want it out of your face?
> 
> Well, here she is, folks. 
> 
> Thank you to everyone for your messages asking about part II. I hope it satisfies!

_When your heart's beyond repair_   
_When you wake and no one's there_   
_When your home consists of only you_   
_Is there anything worth holding on to?_

* * *

_ Betty _

They don’t talk. Jughead makes that very clear. He doesn’t even text her; he just emails her leads and people to talk to. 

_ Talk to Tabitha Tate. Ask about The Mothmen.  _

The emails are typically equally taciturn.

It’s strange, but it shouldn’t be. Jughead’s there, but he’s not. There is very much a second person in this investigation, but she and that second person communicate via email, never text, never meet eyes, and certainly never talk. 

He avoids her as if she’s poisonous, which, she realizes later, is very apt. She  _ is _ poisonous. She had blown up his life. The misery of the last seven years for him? That’s on her.

_ You broke me, Betty _ , his voice rasps in her ear. 

Betty is, as she always has been, alone. It still pushes the memory into her mind months later. A nurse’s sympathetic face, which she could barely see with her eyes nearly swollen shut. 

_ Are you sure there isn’t anyone for me to call, honey? You just went through a lot. You should have someone here with you.  _

The same now as it was then. 

Betty conducts interviews. She catalogs evidence. She marks down trends.

She does not make a murder board. She does not pump sources for information. She does not find any joy in it. 

_ No. There’s nobody. _

On the times Jughead does show up, her stomach gives an odd swoop that she refuses to dig into. He shows up on his terms, when he feels it necessary. 

One time, one stupid time, she sent him the follow-up to an email, and it reads  _ Will you come with me? _

In her defense, the stupid, useless words come after hours of stupid, useless crying after she finds a box of their old investigation materials, and she remembers how it was when it was so  _ good _ . 

When monsters were lurking in the dark, but there were also his warm arms every night. When she felt like she was losing herself, but then there was his voice telling her,  _ I know who you are _ . When there was them, and it was good.

Which, of course, brings it back to the Archie of it all. 

He shows up at her door the day after Jughead finds them. Betty’s been ignoring his texts all day, his texts telling her he just wanted to talk. They’re worthy of ignoring, she rationalizes. They don’t talk. That was never what this was. 

It was just to make her not think, and while she’d like to say that Jughead catching them was like a bucket of ice water thrown over a flame, the reality is that they were never a flame. He was to her as Glen was. Something to keep her warm.

It’s awful, but that’s who she is nowadays, and she’s long since stopped trying to think that she could be more. 

_ The daughter of the Black Hood.  _

She remembers casually saying it to Donna back when it felt like less of a condemnation. 

And the day after, Archie stands on the porch of her house, like he has so many times. His expression is expectant. He knows what comes next. Hell, she knows what comes next. But before, Archie was associated with an escape. Now, she can’t see him without seeing tears in blue eyes, and hair flopping into those eyes, and a voice telling her to leave him the hell alone.

It’s different now, whatever it was they had. She closes the door in Archie’s face and ignores the pebbles on the windows, but for one moment, she allows herself to  _ wish _ they were from someone else, back when the world was simpler. 

  
  


_ Jughead _

Jughead considers backing out so many times, but every time, he talks himself out of it. He thinks about an innocent girl who wants to be reunited with her family. Sometimes he pictures two redheaded eight-year-olds who can’t lose the last parent they have. Polly may not make the best decisions for her kids, but they won’t be orphaned on his account. 

He can’t dig into Betty, though. Those feelings are stored in a vault, and he’s gotten good at ignoring its existence. 

It’s been harder lately, though. When she smiles at him, he realizes he’s been searching for that smile for seven years. Or when her contact pops up on his phone and his heart thuds faster for a few beats. 

Or even when he remembers her, naked on a bed, Archie on top of her. 

That particular memory comes with a feeling that’s harder to identify. Still, he’d roughly equate it to being knifed in the gut and left to bleed whenever he thinks about it, which is approximately every minute.

That also makes him _ furious _ , because she shouldn’t have that power over him. That should be long gone. He shouldn’t care; he shouldn’t even think about her. 

Goddamn it, Jughead wants to not think about her. 

But he does. 

They investigate. It’s a tenuous  _ we  _ at first, because this can’t feel too familiar. He won’t let it. So he communicates with her via email, and pops in sometimes when he’s had enough to drink that his mind is a bit fuzzy along the edges. 

These times, he only thinks about her once every five minutes. 

But as much as neither of them likes it, they’re better together, and they always have been. The progression is natural. 

They interview Tabitha Tate for the second time together, and she sends them to Junkyard Steve. 

Junkyard Steve tells them about the hideout some of his regulars have told him about, the one that they had claimed belonged to the mothmen, the one surrounded by giant black feathers.

The hideout proves hard, if not impossible, to find, but the library gives them some clues on the mothmen. Namely, that they are huge, winged creatures. The stuff of urban legends but the kind not generally known to kill. 

These ones, though. There is a pattern of girls abducted. Easy targets, they have little family, are transient, and mostly seem like opportunity kills. Their bodies are discarded weeks later in a haze of black feathers. They look like they’ve been gored. There are lash marks, as if from wings, on their bodies. 

They speak to the victims’ loved ones and create a general timeline. It’s generally a week or so before the girls are killed. Another two before the bodies are missing. A few more before another victim is taken. The mothmen are slow and methodical in all ways.

And like urban legends, so few see them—shadowy, massive figures in the distance, but nothing else. 

It takes four days. Betty gets tenser each day. Pain screams from her every pore, and God help him; there are so many times he wants to pull her into his arms and just hold her. 

He hates it because it’s seamless. It’s like what they used to be when they were Betty and Jughead. But now they are Betty, and Jughead. That comma taunts him. That’s not what they are anymore. 

Their working relationship comes roaring back, but they don’t talk, and he’s starting to realize how much of their romantic relationship entered into their working one. 

On the fifth day, he can practically see a deadline looming in Betty’s head. He can almost see the words  _ Polly’s almost out of time _ . She works herself to the bone, and he sends up an angry thought, as he has so many times before. She should have to carry this. He can’t even look at her, but he knows she shouldn’t have to take this. 

So that fifth night, against every single thing in him, he forces out a suggestion. 

“Maybe you should call Archie,” he says. The words taste bitter on his tongue. 

She looks at him in confusion, but he doesn’t meet her eyes. 

“Get him to take you home, get some sleep,” he finishes gruffly. 

It is absolutely the last thing he wants, the tiny honest part of himself says. He wants her nowhere near Archie, but that is not his call to make. And maybe Archie was making her happy. The thought turns his stomach, but underneath it all, at the end of the day, he still wants her to be happy. 

It’s all he’s ever wanted. He hates that, but it’s true. He’d bleed out slowly if he could save her as a teenager, and what he feels her for now is complicated, but he’s not sure that’s ever changed. 

So in that way, it doesn’t matter what they’ve been through or the Archie of it all. She’s in pain, so he’s there. 

That’s about as complexly as he allows himself to think. 

“Archie and I are…” she starts, and he sucks a breath in. He doesn’t want to know. More than anything, he doesn’t want to know, but some part of him needs to. 

“Archie wouldn’t understand,” she finishes, running her fingers through her long hair. It’s gotten so much longer and looser since graduation. He finds himself thinking how pretty it is sometimes. It’s not a surprising thought, so he allows himself to have it. Betty has always been the most beautiful girl to him since he was ten years old. 

She stands and moves to the bed, exhaustion dripping from her posture. 

“He wouldn’t understand. I don’t...I don’t need him here.” 

He’s not quite sure what to make of that. 

She yawns again, and her head droops. She’s exhausted, but she won’t allow herself to sleep. She won’t allow the case to remain unworked, even for a few hours. It’s the reason he’s pulled all-nighters for the last four days, to make sure she knows someone is always looking. 

But right now, Betty looks steps away from passing out. He’s nothing to her now, they’re nothing to each other anymore, but somewhere in that locked vault in Jughead’s mind, something warm, something that still cares, pokes free. 

He stands, stretching out his back, and moves his paperwork to the bed beside Betty. He’s not looking at her, but he knows she’s looking at him in amazement to see him so close. He takes the case file from her hands gently, and finds little resistance. 

“Jug,” her voice is soft around his nickname. He fights off a shudder. 

“My turn to take a look at this,” he says shortly. “Fresh eyes and all that. We’ve looked over our own case files a billion times.”

He can feel her tiny nod from beside him as she reaches for one of his files. Snapping his hand over it, he blocks her path. 

“You’ve seen it too, Betty,” he says. “May as well wait for a few hours. Close your eyes, or whatever. I’m going to be here awhile. Big coffee a few hours ago.” 

He can feel her green gaze on him, knows that she knows as well as he that he hasn’t had coffee all day. 

But the subject feels like it will open a bigger one, so she lets it die and curls up on one end o the tiny bed. 

Her head is nearly touching his thigh, and he sucks in a breath, feeling the tickle of blonde hair against his jeans. 

She’s asleep in minutes, but he’s up for hours, casting glances down and never being quite brave enough to reach out and stroke back the blonde strands that have fallen in her face. 

  
  
  


They get the call two days later. 

Betty’s spine stiffens at the words “we found a body.” 

He tells her he can do it, that she doesn’t need to go through this, that maybe it’s not her, but she’s going, and thusly, so is he. 

In the same garbage dump they had visited less than a week ago, a sheet lies over a prone, motionless form. 

Jughead hears Betty suck in a breath, and he knows what she’s thinking. 

It’s Polly. It has to be Polly.

Almost involuntarily, he traces his fingers over the nape of her neck, feeling the charge between her skin and his.

“Betts,” he says, more tenderness in his tone than has been in years. “Let me.” 

But Betty shakes her head, and the sheet is pulled back with an unsteady hand.

Jughead doesn’t even need to look because the sobs start instantly, and FBI Agent Betty Cooper falls to her knees. 

The sobs are great, heaving things, nearly placing her in the fetal position next to the body of her sister, grasping at her hand, yelling out Polly’s name. 

It shatters him more than anything in the last few years has, watching the circle of Betty Cooper’s family get smaller and smaller. 

Betty clutches at her sister’s limp body, again and again, until he reaches out.

He catches her hand and gives her a little tug, but that’s all it takes. She crumbles into his arms, and her forehead tucks perfectly into his shoulder. 

He’s nearly bowled off his feet, but an agent lays a hand on his back to steady him so that he can sit on his knees and draw her closer. He pulls her tightly into him, rubs his hands up and down her back, mutters all the soothing words he can think of to her, words he’s sure she hears none of.

He absorbs her sobs, draws her ever closer. He’s sure they look like one, clutched tightly together. Betty’s fingernails dig into his coat, gripping him with all she’s got, and he just holds on.

  
  
  
  


The funeral is three days later, and the awkward silence is back. He’d held her through the police taking the body, through questioning, through the car ride home. He’d sat on her bed, the bed that was once theirs, and he hadn’t held her, but she’d shook with sobs, and he had held out his hand.

  
  


She’d grasped it, lacing their fingers, and there they had stayed all night. 

But in the morning, she’d woken up frozen. She didn’t look at him, didn’t talk to him, and the tension mounts. 

The twins cry, and their grandmother comforts them. Polly had been a bit of an unsteady presence in their lives, but now they are true orphans, and they grieve. Jughead feels bereft, out of place.

He wants to be there for Betty, but she’s frosty. She tells him to leave. 

For a moment, when they were joined together in grief, maybe they’d allowed themselves to forget the past seven years, but reality was harsh. 

He lingers outside her house. He brings flowers once, and he shows up at the funeral early. He tries to approach her, but she seems to sense him coming and ducks out of the way. She’s avoiding him, or maybe he forgot that they were just coworkers. That they were nothing anymore. 

  
  
  


The ice cracks, and the ice cracks, of all things, because of Archie. He supposes he should have expected it. 

Betty is in Agent Cooper mode. She goes harder than she’d gone before they found Polly. She pounds cups of coffee, she researches wildly, and the murder board they’d constructed together stretches to a whole wall.

She’s frenetic energy, and he knows that wall so well, having hit it many times himself. He feels for her, as he’s done so much more recently. He misses her warmth against him, but she is a whirlwind. She doesn’t stop, she doesn’t even pause, and he doesn’t dare to suggest a break. 

And then Archie calls. Betty looks at his contact on her iPhone, then at Jug, like she’s trying to make a decision. He holds himself tightly. He doesn’t need to say anything. He  _ shouldn’t _ say anything. 

He’s supposed to be there for her. He’s supposed to want what’s best for her, even if what’s best for her feels like a swift series of kicks in the gut. 

She mumbles something about having to take this and exits the house. 

The minutes are tense until she returns. He feels himself concoct more and more scenarios in his mind. Betty and Archie, in covert conversation about him. Her asking him to come over, Jughead being a poor substitute for the man she actually wanted. 

His fists wind tighter and tighter as his heart rate increases. 

Archie spiriting Betty out to town as soon as this was over. Contact dwindling to the occasional text, then an invitation to their wedding, the final nail in the coffin. 

He can hear his own heartbeat in his ears and feels the blood whip through his veins. 

He catches only the faint rumblings of Archie’s voice, but it shoots a feeling he hadn’t felt in days through him.

_ Anger _ . 

It’s not a feeling that is entirely familiar, surprisingly enough. Sadness, yes. Resignation, sure. Heartbreak, definitely. But much as the mask he put on was one of anger; it was so rarely what he actually felt. 

He feels it now, though. As Betty enters and doesn’t meet his eyes, he can’t even bring himself to regulate his expression. 

“He coming over?” Jughead bites out. 

Betty does look at him then; her tired gaze is confused. 

“No? Why would he?”

Jughead gives a tight nod. “So just meeting you later, then?” 

Her gaze bores into him, and she takes in the expression on his face. “Something you want to say, Jug?”

Yes. Yes, there definitely is, but that would require unlocking the vault, and he’s not sure he can take that step. So he simply shakes his head and turns back to the board. 

“How much does he know? About Polly, I mean.” 

Again, he doesn’t want to know, but he  _ has _ to. 

“Enough,” she says shortly. It’s not nearly enough for him, certainly not enough to banish the images of Betty and Archie, happy in love, from his mind. And it is most definitely not enough to subside the anger in his veins. It’s like his mouth has a mind of its own. 

“I just think it’s kind of weird,” he says, faux-casual. “You two share so  _ much _ . That you wouldn’t share this with him.” 

He doesn’t need to see her face to see the anger shine in her eyes. 

“You don’t get to tell me that!” she hisses, whipping down a folder to punctuate her point. “This has nothing to do with you.” 

“Right, I forgot,” he sneers, and there’s no going back. The anger takes over, and he lets it. “Because you don’t need me for anything. You’ve got Archie now.”

Betty groans, passing her fingers through her hair, untangling the ponytail, and letting the blonde waves down. It’s a distraction, however briefly, to the times when he used to lie in bed, her on his chest, and pass his fingers through her hair.

“I don’t have Archie,” she growls. “I never did.” 

“Oh really? Because from what I saw, and I saw a  _ lot _ , it seemed like you did. Did you slip, and his dick broke your fall?”

It’s crass and unfair, and while he knows it, he doesn’t try to take it back. She jets to her feet, and he feels his face unceremoniously yanked to face hers. 

“You have no right. I could do whatever I want. I could,” she breaks off, and he can see her fighting down tears. He knows her; he can see it, but she is Betty Cooper, and she doesn’t yield. 

“I could sleep with whoever I want, and it would be none of your business. You saw to that.” 

He looks at her, incredulous.

“ _ I  _ saw to that? Was I the one who fucked Archie? Who  _ kissed _ Archie when we were together?” 

“No, but you were the one who gave up on us!” 

He gives a wry laugh, wrenching himself from her grasp. “I guess it’s time. I guess we’re doing this because that’s really fucking rich, Betty. It’s really  _ fucking  _ bold of you to blame me for giving up on us when  _ you  _ were the one; you were always the one who turned to Archie whenever we had an issue.”

“I was a scared, traumatized teenager. I didn’t even have time to  _ breathe _ in between traumas. The stonies, what we’d been through? That traumatized me too, Jug. I was hurting, and you wouldn’t talk to me!”

He thinks of Betty, hyperventilating in her room after she believes she killed him. Having to lie to everyone, risking her entire future.

“So why were you even in this, Betty? It was my fight.”

Now it’s her turn to look at him, awestruck. “Because your fight  _ is _ my fight, you asshole! Because I loved you so much that I would do anything for you, including risk everything to cover up a murder. But it didn’t matter in the end, did it? As soon as you knew about Archie, I had lost you.”

“You didn’t even tell me about Archie! At least Veronica was honest. You were just never going to tell me.”

“No!” Betty whips her head from side to side. “No, I was. But for that time? Living with the lie was better than the thought of losing you. I couldn’t even...I couldn’t even think of that. Of not having you. And, again, it didn’t matter! Because I  _ did _ lose you. Because you let me leave. You didn’t  _ fight _ . I wanted to fight, Jughead! But you just left. And for seven years, I have been living with a hole inside me, thanks to you!”

She punctuates that point by digging a finger into his chest, and he realizes for the first time how close they are. Her hair is loose, her eyes are blazing, and she looks profoundly gorgeous. 

“Not for nothing, though, was it?” he bites off. “You finally got your chance with the first choice. You finally got Archie.”

This time, a fist knocks into him, and he involuntarily grabs for her waist. The hit is not hard, not enough to bruise, but now tears are streaming down Betty’s face, and this time, they are tears he put there. 

Her face is red, and her makeup is mottled. “Oh, there it is. Typical Jughead insecurities.” 

She taps his forehead with her fingertips. “He was  _ never _ the first choice. Never. I know this because through two weeks in captivity, I never  _ once _ thought about him. Want to know who I did think about?”

He does, but he doesn’t. He doesn’t want to think about Betty, tied up, helpless, terrified. At the mercy of a serial killer because he left her. Because he wasn’t there. 

Two weeks, Jughead. He starved me. He beat me. I thought I was going to  _ die _ . I was scared every fucking minute, and do you know who I thought of, for just one moment of comfort? Because it sure as fuck wasn’t Archie!”

It’s like throwing a bucket of ice over a raging fire. It’s as if he can’t process the words. “You were captured?”

She nods frantically. “Because I went in  _ alone _ . So every day, I thought of you.” 

She was alone. For years, through the time they were Betty and Jughead, she was never alone. But facing a serial killer, there was nobody there for her. There are pauses in between her words now, pauses for gasping sobs. His fingers tighten at her waist, sinking into the warmth, the familiar dips in her hips that tell him she’s here, she’s alive. 

“And when they found me when I was in the hospital, I felt even more alone because there was nobody. I just wanted you there, Jug! I just wanted you there, holding my hand. I was so scared. I was alone, Jughead, and I just wanted you to hold me. But,” 

She breaks off in a rueful laugh. “I couldn’t because you hated me! And the voicemail...I thought you were doing so well without me, Jug. I thought  _ I  _ was the reason your life derailed, and I just...couldn’t drag you into this, so I was alone.”

It’s too much. It’s as if she’s never said this before, as if every word loosens something inside her because soon she can’t say anything else. She shakes with sobs, and he doesn’t even think about it before pulling her into his arms, where there is  _ finally _ nothing unspoken between them. 

He holds her to him. He absorbs her sobs. He strokes wet hair off her face, and he whispers the words in her ear. 

“I’m sorry. I’m here.” 

She clings to him, drawn into his lap, and he’s crying too. He lifts her off his shoulder to draw her forehead to his. The tears mingle, their breaths mix, till he can’t tell which is him and which is her. 

It’s a feeling he allows himself to get lost in. 

His fingers come up and stroke ever so gently over her cheek. Her face is red and wet, just like his. He whispers the words. 

“I meant it.” 

“What?”

“What I told you back then. I told you that I would always love you. I meant it.” 

She lets out a breathy sob and brings her hands on top of his. 

“Then?”

He nods against her. “Then.”

“And now?” 

He smiles, finally, lacing their fingers together. In every version of themselves, every one he can possibly think of, Jughead Jones loves Betty Cooper. He always will. His soul finds hers, and it doesn’t matter what’s between them, what happened, what will happen in the future. 

It doesn’t change what he’s known since he was ten years old. 

“Betty Cooper. I loved you then; I love you now.” 

There’s a soft exhalation of breath, his name wrapped in softness, coming from her lips. 

He tips her chin up to meet his eyes, touches her cheeks, her forehead, down her hair. 

“And,” he says, pressing his lips to everywhere his lips had traced. 

“Then.” A kiss on her forehead.

“Now.” A kiss on her cheeks. 

“And forever.” This time, they both move until their lips touch. 

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  


They don’t say everything, not right then. There’s more, but not that night. 

That night, they strip each other bare in every sense. That night, they look into each other’s eyes, and they fall over the edge together. 

Tomorrow, the day after, the weeks and years to come, there will be harsh words. There will be slammed doors and therapist’s offices, and mandated time off.

But there will also be soft words whispered into bare skin; there will be gentle kicks under stretched skin, there will be the cool of a ring of metal against their fingers and a certificate with both their names.

It’s an ending, in a way, but it’s more of a beginning, where they hold each other’s hand and stand against the world, together. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The update to regret takes hold (we grow old) is coming. I'm 2000 words in and it's a fight, but it's coming.

**Author's Note:**

> Also, there is a certain character that will, from now on, be written as the version of themselves that they have shown themselves to be, over and over.


End file.
